With Barnstable Municipal Airport’s financial focus squarely on getting its planned new terminal built, there may not be enough left over for a new air traffic control tower.

A $3.185 million appropriation for the tower was approved as part of the 2008 federal budget, but it is not enough to cover all costs for the project. The remainder would be the responsibility of the airport to fund or find.

With so much of its reserves and future revenues targeted for the terminal project, the airport commission is not in a position to commit funding at this time.

At the Feb. 17 commission meeting, interim manager Frank Sanchez indicated that the project might not go forward. The commission and Federal Aviation Administration have yet to come to terms on a contract for the project, which requires that funds be fully committed for the entire project.

Over the past few months the airport has sought language in the contract that would allow the design and permitting work to go forward with no penalty for not completing the project until a later date.

If that language is not accepted, the commission would not proceed with the tower and the federal appropriation would expire. The project would be revisited at some point in the future.

The tower replacement plan is not part of the $31 million terminal project. The existing tower was built in 1961 and is unaffected by any of the terminal plans.

A new tower would be located across the runways from the terminal on the north side of the airport and would be at least double the current tower’s 47-foot height.

Design work on the new tower was halted last fall after the FAA’s funding requirements were spelled out.

As Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry pursued $4 million in federal funds for the project in 2007, it was the subject of a “Keeping Them Honest” report entitled “Airport Pork” on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees.”

The segment painted the project as a pet piece of pork for Kennedy and Kerry, at a time of significant flight delays at major airports across the country. Then-airport manager Quincy “Doc” Mosby defended the project as necessary.

In a 2004 interview with the Patriot, Mosby explained “a pretty weird” optical illusion from the tower as planes landed on runway 6-24. He explained that planes still in the air would sometimes look like they’d already landed, the result of low tower height and runway length.